


Bed of the Wounded

by cryptonym



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:39:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1802326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptonym/pseuds/cryptonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.”<br/>― Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bed of the Wounded

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Note:** Dear 0idontknow0 I fell in love with it the moment I saw it, so thank you for such a wonderful prompt. Thanks to the mods for running such an intriguing fest. And of course, huge thanks must go to my faithful beta, M, who really went above and beyond – getting this in on time despite my every effort to the contrary and whipping it into shape, despite all the horrible angst. You really are wonderful, darling  <3

_this weight of the sea that pounds me,  
this scorpion that dwells within my breast,_

_are a garland of love, bed of the wounded,_  
where without sleep I dream of your presence  
amid the ruins of my sunken breast. 

~Federico Garcia Lorca 

**8th December 1999**

He was drunk. I could hear his voice over the general din of the bar proclaiming the last day of his freedom. I should have left then. I should have pissed in the stinking alleyway or waited until I got home, instead of heading back, past the pushed together tables laden with too much cheap beer, where Potter, an overabundance of ginger and a good proportion of Gryffindor student body past was sitting.

But of course I could never resist getting a rise out of Potter - once more for old times’ sake.

I didn’t need to say a word, just existing in the same room as Potter was enough to put me on his radar. He fell silent as I approached, watching me intently. And suddenly it was too much. I did little more than nod in his direction, hastening to the gents.

I was splashing my face with cold water when the door opened again. I knew it was him by the way the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I turned, face dripping.

“Malfoy,” he said.

“I’m afraid so,” I replied.

He stood there, swaying slightly, his expression somewhere between anger and desire. I kept expecting someone to come in and break the moment, but they didn’t and that was the terrible thing.

I couldn’t see that expression without feeling furious heat melting my clothes, turning the air acrid and unbreathable, scorching my throat and lungs and his hand reaching out for mine _finally_.

We stood there so long, not saying anything, that I was just raising an eyebrow at him about to open my mouth and say something pithy, when he practically hurled himself at me. I found myself in a toilet stall, pressed against a graffiti covered partition with Harry Potter’s mouth on mine, his hands all over me.

He went down on his knees - Harry Potter, on his knees for me, Draco Malfoy, as if this was a simple equation. I watched my cock slide into his mouth, while he moaned like he was _enjoying_ it. I slid my fingers into the haphazard mess of his hair, momentarily blindsided by how soft it was.

It was nothing to write home about. He was less than accomplished - drunk and sloppy - yet when he looked up at me with a burning intensity I felt as though I was the drunk one and he stole my heart forever.

Of course I never expected it to amount to anything. How could one drunken blow job in the toilet of the Leaky the night before his wedding change anything?

Five years later he left without a backward glance.

I finally married Astoria, as had always been planned, produced an heir and tried to forget.

**1st December 2020**

The boy was a brat and he was the reason that Harry had left, both of those things were enough to make me dislike him. The fact that he was also responsible for Scorpius’ anguish made me livid.

Scorpius had met me off the Hogwarts Express, refusing to look at me until I tilted his chin up to see his eyes red from crying, his chin wobbling, and everything had come pouring out of him in a great rush with tears and mucous.

And so Harry Potter returned to my life, in the waiting room of Platform 9 & ¾ - he with his furious son and I with my devastated one.

I still wanted him. It hit me like a bludger the moment I saw him. The intervening years were nothing but dust. The memory of the heat of his body, pressing down heavy upon me, the scent of him wind-whipped from riding his broom and the taste of sweat sheening his skin as he climbed higher and higher, chasing his release and all I could do was try to keep up.

I put my hand on Scorpius’ shoulder, and remembered my reason for being there.

“Your son has been bullying Scorpius,” I said, without preamble, lifting my chin and staring down my nose at Har- Potter.

I saw a flash of discomfort cross his face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that he has been taunting Scorpius, calling him names, casting aspersions upon his sexuality.”

Potter blanched, his lips pressed into a thin line as he looked at the brat, who resembled him so much. That messy head of dark hair, the angry jut of his jaw at being caught out - except for his eyes, bright with fury, but brown not green.

“I didn’t, he’s lying!” the brat yells, then derails his own denial by adding, “That poof tried to kiss me.”

Harry lets out a small noise of anguish, “James,” he says.

“He wanted me to,” Scorpius burst out, his eyes brimming with tears again. “But his friends caught us, and he yelled that I was trying to-”

“You lying bastard!” the brat lashes out, his hand going for his wand.

“James, that’s enough!” Harry gripped James’ arm, above the elbow, quieting his son. “Apologise to Scorpius.”

“But Dad-”

“Do it James.”

“I’m sorry,” the brat said, looking anything but.

“If you hurt him again,” I said fiercely, “I will make sure that you regret it.”

I glanced at Potter then, catching him off guard with his eyes on me, glimpsing what had been, though perhaps it was just my wishful thinking that placed sorrow there.

**20th December 2024**

At first I thought it was an echo. It was a common enough occurrence after the war: fragments of the past appearing in the present. It was thought to have something to do with the strength of the emotions involved. No-one knew what to do about them and the Ministry seemed no closer to a solution. I had seen several at the Manor, of course. Hardly surprising with what had gone on there.

This time I was in Diagon Alley, shopping for Christmas. I had just emerged from Flourish & Blotts with a book on Ancient Mayan incantations for Scorpius when I saw what I thought was Harry Potter running across the cobbled road as though a herd of rampant hippogriffs were after him.

I stopped, staring after him, off balance with the weight of the book, not yet shrunk, under my arm. And then he stopped and turned, laughing, and the spell broke. Brown eyes. Not green.

He was quickly surrounded by a gaggle of children, taken down with shouts of glee, but before that just for an instant he caught my eye. And he smiled.

He had never taunted Scorpius again, as far as I knew. I had worried when Scorpius had started courting Rose Weasley, but it proved unfounded while they were all still at Hogwarts. I ceased to worry when he had left to follow in his father’s footsteps as an Auror, of course.

He certainly looked good on it.

It never occurred to me that he would look _so_ like his father at that age.

**11th December 2026**

I’d been in love with Draco Malfoy since he’d busted my balls about having a go at his precious son. Alright, maybe not in love, but I appreciated the difference between the pale imitation and the real thing.

I’m pretty sure that Scorpius knew something was up when I kept asking if his dad had asked about me. By that time Scorpius was going out with Rose and the pair of them were a nightmare - all musty old books and forbidding looks. I didn’t know what I’d ever seen in Scorpius. Well, alright, I did: he was there and he was willing and it helped that he didn’t look like a blast ended screwt or anything.

But we got caught and it was my fault, but I wasn’t ready to admit that _that_ was me. That I liked boys. Only boys. I still felt like a freak back then. I didn’t know that Aunt Fleur’s sister, Gabrielle, had a long term girlfriend and Uncle Charlie was about as indiscriminate as it was possible to get - legend has it he even shagged a dragon once, but I never really believed that.

I pretended almost all the way through Hogwarts, wanking to images of Draco Malfoy looking down at me - only in my fantasies I was on my knees for him. I didn’t know how to suck a cock, but I was a fucking genius at it in my head. That cold look would soften bit by bit, until it was replaced by a look of pure bliss. I was _that_ good in my head. But really I hadn’t even kissed anyone, not even Scorpius because my stupid friends had barged in just before his lips touched mine. I was a complete virgin.

It wasn’t until my seventh year that I finally got my end away. A fifth year Hufflepuff called William saw right through me.

By the time I saw Draco Malfoy again, at Diagon Alley, I most definitely wasn’t a virgin anymore, and he wasn’t married anymore either - the Prophet had been full of the details of his divorce and the rumours flew.

He looked at me like he’d seen a ghost and I grinned at him, thinking _finally_ , just before my youngest cousins and their friends jumped on me, burying me under a heaving mass of them. When I had fought them off, with help from their parents when they finally stopped laughing, he was gone.

But he had been there and he had seen me and he had looked… I swear he had looked as if he wanted me as much as I wanted him. Just for a moment.

I tried to work up the nerve, but something about our first meeting, coupled with the doubt that crept in after I thought about that brief glimpse for a very long time, stopped me.

Then Teddy snogged me in Grandad’s shed, during the Christmas family gathering and I sort of forgot… not forgot, but Merlin, Teddy’s tongue. It was enough to make anyone forget their own name. It was fantastic and it lasted for three whole days before he went back to Egypt where he was learning to be a curse-breaker with Uncle Bill.

It was bizarre, really, that Scorpius, the little git who started it all would give me the chance I was looking for: he was going to marry Rose Weasley and Draco was throwing them an engagement party.

Dad and Uncle Ron were both loud and angry about the match. Mum and Aunt Hermione blamed it on childhood animosity between them and Draco, but they both denied it, saying that it was just because Scorpius and Rose were much too young.

Mum laughed and said, “like we were, you mean?” poking Dad in the ribs. But that just seemed to upset him even more.

“They haven’t been through a war, like us. We were much older.”

“Thank heavens!” Mum said.

Dad let it drop after that, but I noticed him fiddling with his wedding band and when Mum wasn’t looking he refilled his glass with more than a shot of firewhiskey.

It was a masked ball. Dad called it pretentious and ostentatious and typically Malfoy. Uncle Ron grumbled about being trussed up like Grandma Weasley’s Christmas turkey.

It was one of those clear, crisp nights, where it seemed possible to see every star in the sky.

I wanted to make an impression in the midst of hundreds of other people doing the same thing. It took forever to settle on a burgundy and gold brocade frock coat and fawn coloured breeches, with a simple black velvet mask tied with black ribbons.

We were announced as we entered the Manor ballroom. Mum and Dad went first, and Dad looked like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. When it was my turn I scanned the crowd, frantically, and I saw him, Draco Malfoy, standing with Scorpius and Rose, glass of champagne in hand. Even from a distance he took my breath away.

I pushed my way through the crowd, hurrying after Mum and Dad. And then there he was and up close he made my heart lurch. He was wearing midnight blue robes with a high collar, sparkling with gems - diamonds and sapphires - across the shoulders. He was holding a horned mask to his face, and when he lowered it I almost died on the spot. He was wearing makeup. Not just a touch of eyeliner, but full on kohl and fucking _lipstick_.

I wasn’t the only one staring. Dad looked like he might die of embarrassment he’d gone so red in the face and Draco was staring straight at him with a mocking smile. Mum dragged him off in the end, tugging him onto the dance floor. The way he looked, I wondered if Draco’s marriage had ended because his desires were anything like mine.

Rose and Scorpius were being screeched at by some excitable girls from their year at Hogwarts and that happily left Draco and me alone in the crowd.

“Mr Malfoy,” I said, holding out my hand to him.

His lips quirked up a tiny bit, I wasn’t sure if he was laughing at me for my formality and I cursed myself for such a stupid gesture. Then he took my hand in his, cool and soft. I must have given myself away, because his smile widened, showing his teeth. He looked amused and flattered, and maybe I wasn’t imagining it, maybe he really was interested.

“Would you like to dance?” I asked, finding my voice.

He looked startled then. “With you?” he asked.

I could feel myself blushing, but ploughed on anyway, “Yeah, if you want.”

He inclined his head with a distant smile, putting his drink and his mask aside. And then he was taking me, a hand on my waist the other wrapped around mine. My heart was beating so hard and fast that it seemed impossible he wouldn’t be able to hear it or feel it, and it felt like too much all at once. I closed my eyes and leaned in closer, half expecting to be pushed away. Instead, his hand slipped around my waist and I felt his fingers stroking me. I wanted to kiss him so badly.

Too soon the dance ended and he stepped back. It seemed like all at once he remembered where he was and who he was dancing with. He gave a brief, formal bow and left without another word.

I kept looking for him after that, feeling like a creep but unable to stop myself, getting steadily more drunk on champagne. But there were too many people. I kept catching glimpses of fair hair that made my heart race every time, only to be disappointed.  
I was wrecked. I walked out into the garden for some fresh air. I wasn’t the only one, but I wanted to be alone, or at least feel alone. I walked away from the noise and light of the Manor, winding my way along a gravel pathway that wove through the various sections of garden. Everything was a distant blur.

I let out a startled yelp as a hand grabbed my wrist, pulling me into the darkness of a hidden bower, my hip connected painfully with something, pain blossoming but quickly forgotten as I saw who had me in his grasp.

I didn’t have time to say anything before he pulled me in close, wrapping his arms around me, and he kissed me hard.

“Do you want me, Potter?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “You must know that I-”

He cut me off with another kiss. “Tell me, Potter. Tell me you can’t live without me.”

Perhaps I should have known then, but I thought maybe it was a kink, maybe he would want me to talk dirty.

I agreed, readily. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I’ve always wanted you.”

Draco moaned, pushing me down by the shoulders and I went easily.

It was nothing like my fantasies. Draco gripped my hair tight enough to hurt, holding me still while he fucked my mouth, saying “that’s right, take it, Potter, take it.”

I felt suddenly cold as I understood what he was saying - it wasn’t me he was talking to. And yet I had no doubt that he knew it was me and not Dad on his knees. He came and I choked on it, unready, despite a warning.

He pulled me up and kissed me, and it was so passionate. So desperate. He clung to me and I made a decision. I waited until his hands softened, but before he pulled away completely.

I took my mask off, throwing it down on the ground, and put a hand against his cheek, holding him there and making him look at _me_.

“Is this enough?” I asked, the words sticking in my throat.

For a horrible moment he looked lost and unsure, and then he focused on me, searching my face for something, though I had no idea what.

“I believe it could be, James,” he said.

**9th December 2027**

It was Ginny’s and my eighteenth wedding anniversary. It hardly seemed possible. And there we were celebrating Scorpius and Rose’s wedding day. As Rosie walked down the aisle I remembered my own red-haired vision in white. I squeezed her hand and smiled and felt blessed.

Malfoy was sitting across the aisle, at the front. He looked perfect in his formal robes as ever, his hair less severe than I had seen it before. He looked good. He looked… happy.

I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Rosie reached the front, Ron handed her over to Scorpius, all of them beaming like lunatics and I saw Hermione dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a tissue.

It was strange to see James standing up next to Scorpius as his best man, bearing in mind the bad start they had got off to. But stranger things had happened between supposed enemies. I glanced at Malfoy again. He seemed lost in thought, and I couldn’t help wondering what or who he was thinking about. Whether he ever thought about me anymore - the way I thought about him sometimes, drunk and maudlin, wishing I could feel his hands on me. Remembering the taste of his skin when we’d been flying in the rain together. Remembering the look in his eyes when I told him I felt the same way he did. Even though it was impossible, even though I was going home and sleeping with my wife and thinking of him every time we made love, even though I knew that one day I would have to give up one of them and I had always known what my choice would be. Always.

Once James’ responsibility was completed he went back to the pew, exchanging smiles with Malfoy as he sat down again. Something about them held my attention. Their ease with each other, the way they sat so close their shoulders touched and then James leaned in and said something to Malfoy _whispering in his ear_ and my chest hurt. It ached. I could have been watching myself at twenty-three… Fuck, at twenty-three that _was_ me whispering in his ear, sharing secrets, telling him how much I wanted him.

I missed half of the service, too busy trying to watch Malfoy with my son to pay attention.

After the wedding, everyone went back to the Burrow where the trusty heated, magically enlarged marquee had been installed in the back garden. Yet again, James and Malfoy were seated next to one another. Yet again I wondered what was going on between them - if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing: if Malfoy’s hand was really stroking its way up James’ thigh under the table and whatever it could be that James said to Malfoy that needed them to be so intimately close to one another.

Ginny dug me in the ribs and I said something to her I never thought I would ever say again: “Malfoy’s up to something.”

I glared at him, laughing with my eldest son - the only reason I’d left him.

Ginny sighed heavily. “Really Harry? I thought you and he had buried the hatchet years ago.” She looked over to the top table, and of course at that moment Malfoy was talking to Scorpius, hands resting on his son’s shoulders - the very picture of fatherly care and attention.

I wanted to tell her that she couldn’t trust him, that he didn’t give a shit about her. But if I did that… well, if I did that I had to have some reason. We weren’t teenagers anymore and Malfoy hadn’t been a Death Eater for a long time, if he ever truly was one. We’d never spent a lot of time talking about it, but in five years I’d learnt that some nights he woke up screaming that the Dark Lord was returning, his arm burning with phantom pain, trying to tear off his own skin.

I often wondered, if James hadn’t come along then - Ginny and I had wondered if we couldn’t have children, when it didn’t happen straight away - what would have happened with Malfoy. On the good days I think it would have fizzled out. On the honest days I think about how he knew the dark, secret places inside me that no-one else ever has, even Ron and Hermione - and I wonder if I could have ever been brave enough to choose him, because I loved him above all else. On days like that sometimes… it’s hard to remember how I made the choice, let alone why.

We were dancing, Ginny and I - even though I always told her that I was a disaster and every time she laughed and said “oh yes, I remember now!” - when I saw Malfoy and James leave the marquee. Neither of them looked back.

I left Ginny there in the middle of the dance floor, giving her a lame excuse as I ran off, determined to catch them.

By the time I got out, they had vanished. I checked Arthur’s shed as the most obvious place - I knew that at least two of my children had used it for their illicit liaisons. Albus was still a mystery.

The Burrow seemed empty, until I got to the room that everyone had always called Charlie and Bill’s, even though neither of them had been living at home by the time I first went to stay.

The door was open, and I was going to pass by when I heard… _something_. A sound out of place, followed by a muffled moan.

I stopped, frozen on the landing outside the door, listening to the unmistakable sounds of two people having sex. Part of me wanted to burst in and pull them apart - to drag Malfoy off my _son_ and demand that he never touch him again. Another part of me wanted to just walk away and pretend that I hadn’t heard anything. But some small, vicious, self-torturing part of me couldn’t just let it go - I had to see them for myself.

I peered through the gap in the door, frustrated by the barriers that prevented me from getting a clear view.

Malfoy moaned, “Potter, _James_ , fuck, yes,” and I threw caution to the wind. I pressed my back against the wall and slid along the wall, into the room, wincing at every step.

As soon as I saw them I wanted to take the vision away. I wished with everything in my body that I hadn’t seen James on his knees, Malfoy’s pale fingers tangled in his hair and Draco’s head thrown back in ecstasy.

A trick of the mind made it seem that I was watching us, though we’d never been here together. I never would have… would I? I didn’t even know any more, and I was hard watching them. Horrifyingly turned on by the vision of Malfoy fucking my own son’s mouth.

I wanted to go back, my heart was breaking open and I wanted him so much. I wanted to feel his hands on me, I wanted to taste his cock and feel it as he fucked me for the third time, slow and gentle, my arse still sore from the previous two times, the smell of sweat and sex heavy in the room. But most of all I wanted to hear him call my name like that again, like I was going to make him fly apart but at the same time I was the only thing holding him together.

How could I have thought that I didn’t want any part of him?

I couldn’t watch any more. I slunk out the way I had come, hearing them both crying out as I descended the stairs, my heart clenching with pain. I went quickly, not wishing to hear or witness them together ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> Comment here, or [comment on Livejournal](http://hp-darkages.livejournal.com/6295.html).


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